Way Down (We Go)
by queercapwriting
Summary: Slow(er)-burn Sanvers. Alex stumbles out of the closet and Maggie is steadily there for her. But what's going on for post-getting-dumped Maggie? #GiveMaggieABackstory2k17 is where this story's at.
1. Chapter 1

_Title from the beautiful song choice during Alex's coming out scene (by Kaleo)._

 _Comments and sharing (my tumblr is also queergirlwriting) are love, and the world can use a lot of love this week._

* * *

They haven't spoken in a week.

A week since Alex had stumbled her way to peaking outside of the closet.

A week since Maggie had gently, perfectly coaxed her with the head tilts, understanding eyes, small smiles, and two tiny, enormous questions – prompts, really – even as she was two shots deep in her own pain.

Alex had texted.

Of course Alex had texted.

 _Hey - just wanted to say I hope you're feeling alright. I'm sorry for just ranting at you last night, but... thank you. For listening. I'm here if you want to rant, too._

She'd nearly spilled her coffee when her phone buzzed, almost immediately, with a reply.

 _Thanks Danvers._

She heard the message in Maggie's voice, and her heart catapulted way down into her stomach, up to her throat, and back down to her chest, where it settled unsteadily.

"Fuck," she whispered into her drink, because only then did she _really_ get it: there hadn't been _some_ truth to what Maggie had said. About her.

There was _all_ truth.

" _Fuck._ "

 _I'll let her reach out to me_ , Alex figured. _I told her I'm here. She said thanks. She knows. I just have to wait now. Don't want her to think I only want to be around her because I'm... angling._

She groaned at herself in her head.

She glanced up to see three faces, ranging from concerned to bemused to baffled, all staring curiously at her face.

At which point she realized the groaned hadn't just happened in her head.

"Something bothering you, Alex?"

She cleared her throat and deliberately avoided Kara's narrowed eyes and Winn's widened ones.

"No, no sir. Sorry, just... just thinking."

Hank peered at her thoughtfully for what seemed to Alex like a long while, and she had the impulse to collapse against his chest and just let him father her, latest Cadmus threat be damned.

He nodded softly, knowingly, and though she knew he would never use his telepathy on her without her consent, she wondered if he could somehow sense the woman that was dominating her thoughts. If he did, he said nothing. He let his eyes drift back to the screen the four of them were gathered around, and prompted Winn to continue his technobabble about his latest attempt to predict the location of the next attack.

Even after Hank and Winn had turned back to the briefing, Alex felt Kara's eyes still on her. She fixed her own gaze determinedly on Winn's maps and gulped.

Only years of military training kept her from yelping when her phone buzzed a few moments later and Maggie's name lit up her screen.

Her heart leaped and then all but disintegrated in terror; but only strategic efficiency passed across her face.

"J'onn," she interrupted. "We don't need to guess anymore. They're attacking a high school right now."

Just as the words left her lips, Winn's screens lit up, yellow flares around the school zone Maggie had texted her about.

 _Danvers. New weapons, natl city HS. NOW._

In a single glance, she and J'onn agreed on who they'd deploy, and how. Alex nodded and Hank shifted away, yelling commands to get everyone suited up.

Alex grabbed her sister by the wrist as she was bracing to soar away. "Kara." She sought her eyes and hoped hers said everything they needed to. For now. "Maggie's already on the scene."

Something flashed across Kara's face as she nodded, but Alex didn't have time to interpret whatever it was. Before she could blink, Supergirl had swept her up in her arms and sped them both away toward the scene of the of the unfolding attack.

Winn found himself suddenly alone, with a computer and a deeply furrowed brow.

"Doesn't she usually just go with the rest of the soldiers?" he muttered, asking no one in particular. Part of his brain tickled at him, at the way Alex had said Maggie's name, her desperation; at the way she'd been spacing out mere moments before, just like she'd spaced out last week; thinking, apparently, about Maggie, pool, and Maggie's ex girlfriend.

He shook his head briefly, filing these things away for another moment.

For now, his fingers took control, getting him as much intel as he could to share with his friends. Hopefully, it would keep them safe.

* * *

Kara deposited Alex onto a slab of rubble that used to be concrete, hidden from the attackers, before speeding back into the air, toward where the newbies with Cadmus weapons were elevating an entire bus full of teenagers.

Alex shook herself from the shoulders down, using her moment of re-acclimating to the ground to get her bearings on the scene. She tuned the screaming to a minimum in her ears and scanned the area with her eyes, with her every sense; Hank and the others wouldn't be here for another four minutes, at least, so assessing what she could do before they get there was key.

There were no stray high schoolers or teachers or staffers in the midst of the three white men with alien guns - good - but two of them were advancing on an NCPD car.

On Maggie.

Crouching behind the cop car, Maggie's head was calmly turned to the side, monitoring the advancing men. One of her hands was curled around her handgun, and the other was - Alex's heart trembled - splayed against the chest of a teenage boy, trembling with his back against the car, breathing shakily into Maggie's open palm, keeping him low and out of view of the advancing attackers.

Her hand was dark with the blood spreading over the boy's t-shirt.

Taking advantage of one of the men's distraction with Kara - and she utterly trusted her sister to save that bus, and all the kids in it - Alex sprinted in a crouch, using the shambles the attackers had made of the street to cover her own advance.

She launched herself behind the truck parked in front of Maggie's cop car.

"Sawyer," she whisper-shouted, and Maggie glanced at her, a crooked grin spreading over her face.

The men were getting closer now, shouting taunts. The women ignored them, but the boy trembled.

"Good timing, Danvers," she called softly. She turned to the boy and put both her hands, her gun shifted out to the side, on his shoulders. "You get yourself off this street, run straight down to that alley, understand me? We got this."

The boy nodded, eyes full of disbelieving trust.

Maggie looked back at Alex, whose eyes had clouded with tears - how strange it must be for him to actually be protected by a cop for once - and they needed no words for what they did next.

Moving as one, Maggie slipped out, toward the attackers, around the back side of her car, while Alex drew both of her guns and approached from the front side of the truck. Forcing the men to split their focus, away from the car, so the boy could run to safety.

At their coordinated approach, one of the men laughed; but both of them paused. "I think our guns are a little bigger than yours, girls," he called, and Maggie rolled her eyes as Alex tried not to grin. She saw what they couldn't - she and Maggie both did - what they were too arrogant to open their ears to. Kara had just set down the bus safely, knocking their comrade unconscious in the process. The DEO van was screeching onto their street, and Supergirl had her eyes fixed on the louder man's gun.

He expected a witty retort; he expected a comment; some banter, before he killed these women who dared face him with their merely human guns.

Alex knew he wanted it; so she didn't give it.

Instead, she glanced at Maggie, and, as one unit, the two of them opened fire on the same attacker's gun. Kara's eyes glowed as she sent a jet of red energy at the other attacker's weapon, and both whined as they powered down.

Defenseless now, Alex relished the panic in the men's eyes as Hank and the others swarmed out of the van, sweeping up all three men and their now defunct alien guns.

Kara landed next to Alex with a grim grin on her face, but she said nothing, just watched, as Alex trotted over to Maggie, whose attention was riveted on the boy she'd been protecting behind the cop car. His friends were swarming him, now, and he nodded at her in the midst of their attention. She nodded back solemnly, smiling faintly. Feeling rather than hearing Alex behind her, she began speaking while still staring after the boy in the distance.

"Saved a bunch of his classmates, that kid, when they tore up the sidewalk. Has a nice gash on his chest to prove it." She looked down vaguely at his blood on her hand, and Alex fought down the impulse to take it between her own. "He'll be okay," Maggie continued, still not looking at Alex.

Alex nodded in relief, in processing, knowing somehow that Maggie would sense the gesture. Silence grew between them as they both simply watched the high schoolers celebrate their safety. Alex glanced back at J'onn and Kara; they nodded at her as Hank slipped back into the van and Kara soared back into the air, grateful that they knew she wasn't ready to head back to the DEO just yet.

She wondered how much both of them had surmised from her desperation to get to Maggie, to keep her safe.

As though reading her thoughts, Maggie turned to her slowly, and Alex's knees grew weak at their eye contact.

Alex swallowed at the sudden intensity of Maggie's gaze; how could she have forgotten so soon how Maggie's eyes innervated every cell in her body with a single glance?

A long moment of silence lingered between them, both acclimating to each other's proximity, each other's eyes, each other's simple presence.

Maggie recovered first; outwardly, at least.

"You got here earlier than your team." Her voice was mild, but her gaze was incisive.

 _You and me?_

 _Huh. I think I read you wrong. I didn't know you liked girls._

Alex pffted, pulling her head back and suddenly found herself looking anywhere but Maggie's face.

"I thought Supergirl might need a hand."

"Supergirl."

 _I just thought you were angling toward something._

"Well... and you."

 _You'd be surprised how many gay women I've heard that_ from.

Neither woman looked away and neither wanted to.

 _About_ _what?_

Alex swallowed and wrenched her eyes away, looking, again, around the scene.

"You were here alone."

Maggie shrugged. "Force is slower to respond when the school being attacked isn't mostly white."

Alex nodded slowly and bit the inside of her cheek, staring again at the embracing kids, now settling down together in the rubble, the rest of the school day clearly postponed.

She stole a glance at Maggie as the other woman turned her attention toward the - finally - approaching NCPD cars.

Sensing her gaze, Maggie turned back toward Alex. "I gotta go. Do the report filing thing."

Alex nodded a little too enthusiastically. "Right, yeah. Of course. Reports." Not knowing quite what to do with her hands, she alternately folded and unfolded them across her chest. She focused on not bouncing on the balls of her feet with nerves.

The skin behind Maggie's eyes tightened as she searched Alex's wide-eyed face. She grinned gently and took a step away. "See you around, Danvers. And uh- thanks for showing."

Throat confused and lips baffled, Alex just nodded.

"Maggie!" she blurted out a few long moments later at the detective's retreating back. Alex stepped back up to her, carefully arranging her arms so it didn't look quite so much like she was hugging herself.

Maggie turned and waited, and Alex couldn't tell if her mild expression was from hopefulness, wariness, or both.

Alex's eyes shifted around for a moment before landing back on Maggie's face.

"Listen, I... I didn't give... I was so busy trying to hand out with you that I didn't... I was trying to make you smile when I should have been offering you a space to... to mourn." Maggie blinked and Alex stumbled on. "I just want you to know that I really like... I really like hanging out with you, but I also just... I want to be a friend to you, Maggie, and I promise I am normally a better listener than I was last week."

This earned her a gentle laugh, and her heart swelled.

"I don't want you to be in any pain, but I'm... I'm here if you want someone to be in pain with. That's... that's all."

"Sawyer!" The shout came from across the street, and Alex had to fight to suppress her glaring, hard, at whichever colleagues of Maggie's needed her at the moment.

"Paperwork calls, Danvers," Maggie said softly, gravel in her voice.

Alex closed her eyes and exhaled slowly through an open mouth, all but full-out hugging herself now. Her eyes shut, she didn't see Maggie's stare, Maggie's growing smile.

"You gonna give me a chance to win back my money tonight, then?"

Alex's eyes flew wide open, and it was all she could do to avoid jumping up and down.

 _Keep it cool,_ Danvers.

"You bet," she offered, as casually as she could.

* * *

She grinned inexplicably through the entire afternoon's worth of briefings, completely oblivious to the looks Kara and J'onn kept exchanging across from her.

She was too focused on other problems.

Like whether she should let Maggie win her money back, and which outfit would most effectively say _sure we both know I have a big crush on you that you realized before I did but also I really want to be a good friend to you right now but also look I'm hot_.

She went with a leather jacket, black tank, and tight, tight jeans.

She went with a flutter in her heart that she'd never, ever felt before.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Maggie was already there when Alex strolled into the bar. She'd started on her own beer, but she had two untouched, full shot glasses in front of her. When she felt Alex approach, she pushed one toward her without looking up. Alex straddled the chair on her side of the table - the same table as... well... _that_ table - _what you said. About me -_ and took the shot glass tentatively between her fingers.

"Starting off quick," she observed, falling just on the over-eager side of mild.

Maggie grinned crookedly and reached out her shot glass to Alex's, clinking them before smartly hitting hers on the table and throwing it back. Maggie didn't flinch at the burning, but Alex did. Maggie noticed and tried not to smile. She noticed and tried not to feel.

She held up her beer toward Darla and tipped it toward Alex as she said, more successfully mild-toned than Alex, "Gotta start off with a level playing field if I want my money back."

Alex scoffed. "We're _both_ drinking."

Maggie smiled, and almost winked. "Yeah, but I can hold it better than you."

"Pfft, yeah. Okay."

A nauseating exhilaration swooped, suddenly, through Alex's stomach as she realized that no man had ever left her with an utter lack of ability to formulate a comeback. _But that's not why we're here, Alex_ , she chided herself roughly.

She drummed her fingertips on the table, looking around, looking anywhere but the woman in front of her. She didn't notice Maggie grinning faintly at her awkwardness. Saved by Darla arriving with a freshly opened bottle of beer, Alex took a few quick gulps, like she was chugging water in the brief seconds between rounds of a training session with J'onn.

"So did you all find out why they targeted that school today?"

Maggie sighed and her eyes narrowed. "Figured they could make a splash without too much risk of retaliation. After that thing at Lena Luthor's party."

"The black body field generator? Yeah, we're working on a way to harness its energy into portable weapons - "

Alex caught a glimpse of Maggie's bemused expression, a smile plastered on the detective's face. Alex's heart leaped when she realized the smile was actually reaching her eyes.

"What?"

"You realize I'm a science cop, but our technology is more like easy-bake ovens than anything else, so... " Alex scoffed with a smile while Maggie took a deep swig of her beer and gestured for more shots. "You know, I can't figure out whether you were the most massive nerd in school or if you were the party girl with a closeted thirst for chem labs."

Alex started at her use of the word "closeted", but a look at those gentle, calm eyes soothed her. She chugged a good bit of her beer, scrunching her nose as she pointed at Maggie in mock reprimand with the bottle.

"I'll have you know that I was the first." She drank again. "Well, until I got a little older. Then it was the party girl thing."

Maggie grimaced her thanks at a glaring Darla and held up her fresh shot glass toward Alex, who clinked them before tossing it back.

"The burden of perfection," Maggie observed, and Alex couldn't meet her eyes.

"Well, what about you? Bet you got solid As, but quietly, and spent all your outlaw lunch periods stealing money from bullies to give back to the kids they took it from to begin with."

Maggie gave a rueful laugh. "Cute, Danvers. But only half right." She squinted at her, studying her for a long moment, before she motioned them both up and toward the pool table. They were silent as Alex racked the balls. Maggie leaned with both hands on top of her cue, staring at the taller woman's casual concentration as she completed her task, spinning up the rack with a flourish before chalking up her own cue.

"Want me to break?"

Maggie snapped out of her staring and stalked around to the far side of the table, turning the cue ball over in her fingers before setting it down with a dull clack on the table. "Not a chance."

Alex breathed a silent laugh and sipped at her beer, trying not to trace Maggie's entire body with her eyes as she watched her bend forward, squint, and push the cue ball into a clean, if not overly expert, break.

"Stripes!" she called victoriously. Alex gave a mock bow.

"I wasn't some badass elementary school Robin Hood outlaw. Straight As, oh yeah. But I couldn't get back other people's lunch money, you know, when I couldn't even keep my own.

Her cue slipped even though she'd lined everything up nicely, and she scratched the shot. She rolled her eyes at herself, but Alex left it alone. She glanced up at Maggie even as she leaned forward to set up her own shot.

 _"_ Non-white, non-straight girl in Blue Springs, Nebraska, huh?"

Maggie made a noncommittal sound in her throat, but her face didn't register a response until Alex missed on a perfectly clear shot.

"Danvers." Alex flinched and turned to pick up her beer, her face scrunched up in guilty anticipation.

"Did you just blow that shot? Because I know I said I wanted you a bit tipsy for this, but no way you're at the uncoordinated stage already."

Alex swung her body around to face Maggie, bracing her hands on the pool table on either side of her hips. Maggie gulped at the sudden, heady openness of Alex's stance.

When Alex spoke, her voice was several octaves lower than it usually was. "And what if I did, Detective Sawyer? Gonna bring me in?"

Maggie's body fought the wall she'd erected around herself. _We've been flirty before, she's not trying to hurt you. She's not taking advantage of you; she's a nerd and she's trying to make you smile._

 _She was flirty when_ she didn't know _she was flirting. Now she does. So now it's different. Now she's_ angling.

 _But what if I want her to be?_

 _Do you really want to throw away what could be a great friendship just to get used as someone's coming out affair?_

 _That's not what she's -_

 _But it is. Even if she doesn't intend it. That's what it is._

And suddenly Alex's tentative hands were hovering just shy of actually touching Maggie's tensed forearm, her face a map of humiliation and concern.

"Maggie? You alright? I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by - god, I keep messing everything up - I just wanted you to smile - "

Maggie started at her proximity, at her eyes. "I uh - I gotta go."

"Maggie!"

She stopped halfway to the door, and turned to face Alex. She reached in her pocket and flashed a crisp, folded 20 at her. "I'll be right back. Don't mess up the table, Danvers. First time I have a shot at beating you, I don't wanna throw that away."

Alex opened her mouth, but by the time she found something resembling her voice, Maggie was slipping out the back door into the alleyway.

* * *

The first order of business was shooting a text off to her sister.

 _Hey Sis. Know that girl I told you about? The fed?_

Maggie's phone whooshed slightly as the text sent off, and she slipped the thing back into her pocket with a groan. She heaved a heavy sigh and looked around the deserted alleyway. Squatted down, back on her haunches. Buried her head in her hands. Tilted her head back to try and see the stars. Buried her head in her hands again.

Her back pocket vibrated.

 _Told her you like her yet, Mags?_

She scoffed aloud before realizing her big sister couldn't hear her.

 _I never said I liked her. She's just... different._

The response was as instant as the length of the message allowed it to be.

 _Different is likable, for you. I know you loved what's-her-name, Mags, but you always leap before you look. And with this fed, you're looking. That means something. And I don't think you being cautious from your ex's burns explains it all._

Maggie groaned with her head in her hands, her elbows on her splayed out knees.

"Dammit," she muttered.

"Why don't you just tell her how you feel already?"

Maggie groaned louder and slowly sat up, leaning her head all the way back to the concrete wall behind her.

"You sound just like my sister, Darla."

"Please tell me that's not why you dumped me."

Maggie chuckled against her will at that, and she rolled her head to the side to her (other) ex.

"It's not that simple. With her, I mean." Darla waited. Maggie grimaced. "She's just coming out. To herself. I don't wanna be her coming out affair, the one she uses and then leaves the second she finds a woman she's actually in love with, not just has revelation-type feelings about."

Darla sighed heavily and squatted next to Maggie, looking sidelong at her with a reluctant expression. "I don't think her feelings are relevation-type, Mags." Maggie squinted at her, and Darla rolled her eyes before pressing on. "She completely fucked a guy up to find out where you were, when you were kidnapped when the president was in town. Something about how we all owe you because you keep risking your life to fight for our rights. M'gann says she almost put a bar stool through his throat to try to find you."

Maggie cocked an eyebrow and just stared.

Darla grunted as she stood up heavily. She looked down at Maggie as she told her, "Look. I think your newest hottie's just another self-righteous, gun-toting human, but you clearly don't. And she clearly cares for you. Whether I want to admit it or not. Don't throw away a shot at happiness even if that's just as friendship for now: just because you self-destruct all the good things in your personal life - like, you know, me - doesn't mean you should."

A couple clearly set on spending the rest of the evening in closed quarters stumbled out of the door, then; Darla jumped, but Maggie just closed her eyes at the sound. "Why the hell are you hooking me up, Darla?"

Her ex just smirked as she ducked back inside. "She's cute. If you don't go for it, I might."

Maggie sauntered back into the bar, hands balls into loose fists, with no more hesitation. Darla smirked and rolled her eyes as she watched Alex's spine go straight at seeing Maggie walk back toward her.

"Humans."

* * *

Alex's heart jumped into her throat when she saw Maggie strolling back in, and she wondered vaguely if she, on the outside, looked that confident, too.

"Ready to give me my money back, Danvers?"

Alex smiled, but she stood too steadily, too deliberately.

"Maggie." Her voice was low, and Maggie gulped with raised eyebrows meant to make her seem more mild, more at ease, than she felt.

 _That's not true. I feel more at ease with her than with... And that's the problem._

"Are you alright?" Alex was doing that squinting thing now, and Maggie wanted to curl into the protection of her eyes, the respect and adoration she felt radiating from them.

She didn't.

"Yeah. Yep. Yeah. All good."

Maggie grabbed her cue and set up a successful shot. She smirked and Alex looked mildly impressed. Her smirk morphed into a smile.

"You told your sister yet? About... you?"

She didn't use the word - didn't say gay, didn't say lesbian, didn't say queer - because Alex hadn't used any yet, and those choices were too intimate for anyone to make for someone else.

Alex almost choked on her beer, but shook her head solemnly once she swallowed. "I tried. Telling Kara. Life just keeps... getting in the way, you know?"

Maggie grinned knowingly and she glanced up from her concentration on the pool table, trying to figure out where her next shot should be. "Life's gonna be in the way all the time, you know. This... this is an important thing. An important life thing. Gotta force the time, sometimes."

Alex nodded thoughtfully. "You can put the nine in the corner pocket," she offered after a moment.

Maggie wielded her cue threateningly, but her dimples gave her away. "Now I know you're trying to let me win, Danvers."

"Wouldn't do such a thing, Sawyer."

Maggie chuckled and sobered as an old Matchbox 20 song started blaring up through the bar. _Rest Stop._

And she started talking, then, without warning, without preamble. About her ex. About her pain. Her heart swelled with gratitude when Alex continued shooting pool, only occasionally giving her searing, searching, sympathetic glances. Even though Alex deliberately kept it casual, Maggie had never felt more listened to. More heard.

"One of my first cases," she began, "this girl was actually diagnosed as sociopathic. Like, not in the colloquial sense, but you know, that's what they argued in court. Her defense. And she just… obviously she did these terrible things, right, that's why I had to bring her in. But she was in so much pain. She genuinely couldn't understand navigating other people's needs, and I mean sure there has to be accountability, but… just imagine how painful it must be for someone to have no one in the entire world understand the only logic that makes sense to them."

She paused and looked up at Alex, at this woman who standing beside her, watching her intently. More intently than _she'd_ ever looked at her, certainly, even though Alex was bent over the pool table, feigning casualness for Maggie's sake.

Maggie shrugged off the comparison between this woman - _this woman, god_ \- and her ex. She kicked back another shot.

"I'd lash out: wouldn't you?" Alex said nothing, just let Maggie speak. She wasn't looking for words from Alex, anyway. She was grateful that the other woman knew it.

"So hell, I don't know, maybe my ex is right. Maybe I _am_ pathologically incapable of caring about anyone's feelings but my own."

Alex finally straightened up at this, as the 3 ball followed the six neatly into the side pocket. "Maggie, you've devoted your entire life to fighting for people who are…" She looked around, searching for the right word. " _Oppressed_ , from the moment they get to this earth."

 _Growing up a non-white, non-straight girl in Blue Springs, Nebraska, I might as well have been from Mars._

"Hell, even people who aren't born on another planet. That… that hardly seems _sociopathic_ to me."

Maggie flinched as another shot found its way down her throat and tilted the glass toward Alex, pointing at her repeatedly with scrunched up eyes until she could find her words. Alex silently gestured to Darla for water.

"But. But, the thing is, you don't know me, Danvers. You don't know – "

"But I do." Alex had set her cue aside, now, and took a step toward Maggie. A step that made it hard for Maggie to see straight, that made it hard for Maggie to think about anything but her pounding heart. "I know a little bit, because I see, Maggie, I _see_ you. I see how you move in the world, I – " She stopped when Maggie waved her off with a large, sweeping hand gesture, shaking her head and chugging her beer. "Okay, I don't know you as well as I could. Fine. But I want to. Know you."

Maggie lurched forward on the stool she'd sank onto; so close her breath caressed Alex's lips. Alex swallowed and cursed internally. _Is this what it's always been meant to feel like?_

"No. You don't."

The words were soft, but they were broken, and Alex's heart sheered along with it.

She hesitated, but only for a moment, because she was Alex Danvers, DEO, and when she hesitated, lives were lost. She put her gentle hands on Maggie's, and the world swirled to a stop around them.

They both stared at their hands for a long moment before dragging their eyes back up to meet each other's.

"I _do_ , Maggie. I want to know you. Let me."

Maggie gulped, her usual swagger on hiatus from the mere proximity of Alex fucking Danvers.

It returned, though, in the wash of Alex's eyes.

"Alright, Danvers. You wanna know me? Fine. But to know someone, you gotta know what they're like when they lose _and_ when they win." Alex caught on and took her hands back, guffawing in that awkward, love-struck - _love-struck?_ \- way she had.

"Oh, so you're gonna finally bring it?"

Maggie smiled, and Alex nearly swooned.

"Oh yeah."

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Alex Danvers was not accustomed to losing.

And yet, as Maggie started pulling ahead, started putting away stripes faster than Alex could sink solids, she didn't seem to mind.

She didn't mind because Maggie had a habit of scrunching up the skin behind her eyes, very slightly, only for a moment, the corners of her lips pulling up into the ghost of a grin, when she felt cocky; when she felt confident; when she knew a shot had looked particularly sexy. And when she sank something unexpected, her reservations left her, and her dimples came out in full force.

If losing had felt like this all along, maybe Alex would have given up on that whole perfection thing years and years ago.

"Why are you so good all of a sudden?" she questioned after a while, after Maggie started encroaching on getting her money back.

Maggie just shrugged, and Alex got the impression that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't the only one who'd been throwing games to make the other feel good.

 _She wanted to make me feel good_.

Alex could have sung from the rooftops about it.

Neither of them mentioned that they had work in the morning.

Neither of them mentioned that as the night drew on and started to become morning, the sounds they made - their snippets of conversation, their cues striking, eight balls sinking into corner pockets, their groans of frustration, their chuckling at the other's missed shots - were increasingly the only sounds in the bar.

Neither of them mentioned that as they kept sipping on their beers, exhaustion combined with heady giddiness combined with alcohol, their words started slurring. Very slightly, very subtly. Their bodies started tilting into each other's. Very slightly, very subtly.

Once, Alex ran her finger across the small of Maggie's back as she bent down to set up a shot. She hissed in surprise, in attempt to suppress the intensity of arousal that shot through her at the simple insistence of Alex's touch.

Maggie missed the shot.

Once, Maggie let herself get caught staring at Alex's lips. She regretted it instantly, because she recognized the thirst that grew in Alex's eyes - worse, she knew it was reflected in hers.

Alex missed the shot.

* * *

In the end, neither knew who won more games. They were both too distracted with the smaller games they played, more and more the more they had to drink.

Like when Alex proposed they get to know each other better. Maggie started, and Alex laughed. Maggie fought down the intensity of being turned on by Alex's confidence, intermixed with her determined uncertainty.

"A game. You tell me something I don't know about you, and I'll tell you something you don't know about me."

Maggie arched an eyebrow, and deadpanned, "I got shot in the line on my first mission out."

Alex looked horrified, and Maggie put her hand to her forearm. "I'm fine." She swept her hands out at her own body. "Obviously."

Clouds of concern still colored Alex's eyes, but she shifted focus as promised; she owed Maggie a tidbit.

"In high school, I had this huge crush on my best friend. Vicky Donahue. I mean, I think I did. I didn't know what it was, then." She drank deeply, and Maggie nodded, with a soft smile on her face.

She learned, until the game fizzled out, that Alex had always wanted a sister; that she secretly loved Kara's N-Sync phase; that she was a huge tomboy in college, where she discovered that flannel shirts under lab coats kept you warmest longest in the lab.

Alex learned, in her turn, that Maggie and her father disagreed on almost everything, except their mutual love of motorbikes and women; that her big sister had bought her the first Triumph she had; that she'd met her first alien in college, and promptly slept with her.

Listening to that one, Alex had licked the beer off her lips a little too slowly. Maggie's determination to keep it in the realm of friendship wavered, but luckily, Alex had gotten distracted by seeing the perfect shot on the table. She took it, and won that round.

The questions game had been replaced by silent touches, subtle glances, and coy laughter. A couple of times, Maggie swore that Alex looked like she was going to just grab her by the forearm and kiss her, but she didn't.

Maggie hated how disappointed it got her.

"Hey, lovergirls! We're closing." Maggie shot daggers at Darla while Alex nodded like she wasn't mortified.

A silence grew between them as they put their cues away; a silence, that is, until Alex blurted, like she'd been having a debate with herself and the impulsive, over-eager side won: "Can I take you to breakfast?"

Maggie looked up, startled for a moment, before she chuckled. "Usually a few dates before we get to breakfast, huh?"

Alex smiled awkwardly, radiantly, overly pleased, no reservations - _is she blushing?_ \- and Maggie decided, ex and newly coming out be damned, it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen.

"Usually _other things_ before we get to breakfast," Alex leaned in conspiratorially like she was a kid in high school whispering across study hall about _doing it_.

Maggie laughed at that, a solid, hard laugh; the kind she hadn't had since she got dumped.

"Nerd," she teased, and Alex looked pleased.

Against her better judgment, Maggie held out her bent elbow, and Alex wove her arm through it eagerly. Maggie had expected her to - which was why she'd offered her arm to begin with - but she didn't expect what Alex did next.

Brushing their hips together, Alex drew Maggie closer through the crook in her arm, bringing both hands to the place where their arms linked. Like they were... together. Like they were a _thing_. Like they weren't a fucked up detective still smarting from a shattered relationship and an overly eager, newly coming out extra-legal alien hunting agent.

Darla mimed vomiting on their way out the door, but her smirk might have given her away to the astute observer.

Maggie's brilliant smile would have given her away to _anyone_.

* * *

"So, you a salad girl or a burger and fries girl?" Maggie wanted to know.

Alex observed her over the top of her coffee mug and arched an eyebrow.

"What do you think?"

Maggie almost panicked: she'd done that thing when her voice dropped again, and she thought if she did it one more time, so help me, she would kiss her senseless right then and there, other diner patrons be damned.

The detective stared back, and gulped so subtly Alex almost didn't notice it. Almost.

"I think I just asked you about lunch type stuff, when we're supposed to be here for breakfast." She ran a finger over the glossed menu in front of her and glanced up at the woman across the table from her. Her short hair was more crimped than it usually was, probably the result of such a long time since the last... whatever it was Alex did to her hair. She wondered what Alex _did_ do with her hair. How she chose what she wore every day.

Alex's retort jolted her out of her thoughts.

"Doesn't change my question: which do you think I am? You're a detective, Sawyer: _detect_." She enunciated both ts, and it drove Maggie mad. She wondered where this sudden streak of confidence in Alex was coming from. Maybe it was the alcohol, the punchiness from the late hour. Maybe it was whatever vibes she was giving off. _Dammit._

She squinted at Alex, head tilted to the side as she studied her. Alex's lips opened slightly at suddenly being the object of such intense scrutiny. But she bore it, and well, too.

"At home, you're a _whatever will fuel me_ girl. When it's not takeout, you throw things on a plate and call it a salad. But you'd never order a salad out, because you don't want anyone thinking you don't eat a lot just because you're a woman with a classically gorgeous body. Oh, but when you get a burger, it's veggie. Too much blood at work to have it on your dinner table, too."

Alex blinked and Maggie swore internally.

A waiter with a swish in his step and a small smile on his face approached to ask them their order. Without breaking eye contact with Maggie, Alex said, "Can I please get a veggie burger and fries? Also a chocolate shake. Please."

Maggie smirked. "Your turn," she said. _Figure me out like I figured you out, Danvers._

"And she'll have a Greek omelette. Home fries... well done. She can share my shake. Please. And thank you."

Catching on, the waiter smiled deeply, and looked at Maggie for confirmation. Maggie didn't break eye contact with Alex, but she inclined her head toward him, sensing his pleasure in being able to wait on fellow queers. "Whaddaya think, Noah? She a keeper?"

"Got your order right on the head, Mags." He winked at Alex, who sat up straighter, deeply impressed with herself. She cocked an eyebrow and sipped at her coffee as Noah retreated, chuckling to himself, to give their order to the kitchen.

"Are you a regular everywhere?" Alex teased.

"Good to know people when you don't have the DEO's tech," Maggie leveled. Alex shrugged, and Maggie leaned across the table slightly.

"How the hell did you figure that out? I gave you my logic; you didn't give me yours."

Alex shrugged again. "Detectives aren't the only ones who _detect_." Maggie glared, and even that looked adorable. Alex relented. "You'd mentioned a while ago how you could kill an omelette because you were so hungry, and the Greek part was a guess because they're my favorite blend of salty and savory, and the well-done home fries is because you always go for the crispiest fries when M'gann brings some to the bar." She said this all in one whirl of breath, slightly embarrassed but also reminding Maggie slightly of the girl she might have been in high school; eager, not only to have the right answer, but to tell you exactly how she got it so you could be impressed. Because if she couldn't impress you, you wouldn't know she was there.

Maggie raised her coffee mug, impressed. "Nicely done, Danvers."

Alex grinned. "You got something against first names, Sawyer?"

She left out the part about longing to hear her first name from Maggie's lips, the way it might sound when she was sleepy, or just waking up, or casually in the middle of the day, or screaming under Alex's body in the middle of the night...

"You go somewhere, Danvers?" Alex jumped, realizing that she must have spaced out. She went for her coffee, gulped too quickly, and squeezed her eyes shut as the still-hot liquid slipped down her throat.

"Hot," she whispered, tears involuntarily flooding her eyes as the roof of her mouth burned, ignoring the double entendre floating in the air between them.

 _Yeah, it is_ , Maggie almost said. She almost said it, she almost leaned across the table and offered to soothe Alex's burnt mouth with her own.

Almost.

Almost.

 _Not the time, Sawyer. Not the time._

 _Not yet._

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

The sun was just starting to paint the sky by the time they finished eating, by the time they'd fought over the bill and Maggie lost. (They had a system at the bar; for smaller tabs, they'd take turns; bigger tabs, they'd split down the middle. They didn't have a system, yet, for other places.)

They stretched their arms up to the sky as they left the diner, trying to fight the exhaustion in their muscles from a night full of zero sleep, heavy drinking, heavy sexual tension, and heavy stakes at pool.

"You have time to get some sleep?"

Maggie slipped her phone out of her pocket. "Nope," she laughed. "You?"

"We should've gotten some coffee to go."

They grinned faintly at each other before staring back up at the sky.

Alex glanced at her own phone after a moment and sighed. "Not enough time to go home and sleep, but I don't have to be in for another hour or so. You?"

"Yeah." Maggie was still staring at the hues of red starting to streak the sky, thumbs looped in her pockets. Thinking, distinctly, about _not_ kissing the woman standing next to her.

So she was startled when something hard, smooth, and round careened gently into her stomach.

Alex's motorcycle helmet.

"What - what's your bike doing here?"

Maggie hadn't noticed Alex's Ducati parked outside the diner when they'd walked in. Alex was already swinging her leg over it and starting the engine, looking over her shoulder at Maggie.

"I park a different place every time I ride to the bar. Don't want to attract attention to the place, you know?"

Alex's protectiveness of the bar made Maggie gulp, and she looked down at the helmet Alex had put in her hands to distract them both from acknowledging just how turned on she was.

"And last night you just happened to park here, huh?"

"Fate, I guess."

Alex kept Maggie's eyes in hers until they disappeared briefly behind the spare helmet she was pulling over her head.

"Always ride with a spare, right?"

 _When you're trying to pick up girls, yeah_ , Maggie distinctly did _not_ say.

By way of response, she pulled Alex's helmet over her head, knowing better than to question why Alex had given her hers instead of the spare.

"Fate," she muttered to herself as Alex revved the Ducati's engine.

* * *

They'd bickered briefly about who was driving.

"It's my bike," Alex had argued.

"I don't ride in the back," Maggie insisted.

"What, afraid I'm gonna outgay you?" Alex flirted.

They'd paused, frozen, at that, and Maggie wished she could see Alex's eyes better behind her helmet.

Maggie had climbed on the back of the bike without further comment. She stopped, neither of them breathing, for a heavy moment before slipping her arms fully around Alex's waist. Alex stiffened for a moment before sighing into her touch. Maggie ran a comforting thumb up and down her waist. Alex revved the engine in response, and swore she'd give anything, do anything, to hear Maggie laugh like that - to _make_ Maggie laugh like that - every day, every night, every time in between, until the day she died.

"Where're we going?"

"Wait and see, Sawyer," was Alex's muffled reply, and off they went.

They rode seamlessly together, Maggie's body bending into every curve - in the rode and in the body of the woman in front of her - perfectly. They anticipated each other's adjustments, the tilts of each other's bodies.

The roads still didn't have many cars on them at this hour, and Alex took advantage, pushing 85, 90, 95, 100, as an endless stretch of hills, of rolling grass and the occasional rock formation rose into view. She relished the way Maggie's arms tightened around her - not in fear, but in pragmatism - the faster she pushed the engine.

It made her kick it even faster.

Alex finally pulled over the bike just as the road stopped, giving way to the earth's own inclinations.

Maggie braced her hands on Alex's tiny but sturdy waist as she climbed down from the bike, and offered her hand, against her better judgement, as Alex slipped down. Alex shook her head, laughing softly, but took it. Maggie was grateful; she was already keening from the loss of Alex's body flush against hers, and she figured, if the nature of Alex's coming out was any indication, that she was, too.

They kept their fingers connected as long as was plausible. When they both had to remove their helmets to better take in the quiet, the view; the sunrise over miles of undisturbed hills.

"Danvers, this place is... it's so beautiful," Maggie said as soon as she shook her hair out and brought her helmet to rest on her hip.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," Alex responded.

But she wasn't looking at the hills.

She was looking at the way the growing sunlight played on Maggie's perfect hair, on her perfect skin, on her perfect eyes. She was a flower growing toward the sun; an angel blooming in the perfection of the earth she'd sprung from.

Maggie turned toward Alex suddenly, her eyes wide; like she felt Alex's eyes. Like she felt the truth of Alex's statement.

A charge passed between their eyes as they met, but neither woman spoke. Instead, Alex shifted closer to Maggie - so close she could feel her body heat - and stood. Just stood. Looking.

Maggie didn't ask what the place meant to Alex. How she'd found it. Why she'd taken her there. If she'd ever taken anyone else there.

Maggie didn't ask, because questions would ruin the magic.

The silence grew between them, and it was comfortable. The world was, in that moment... perfect.

Just as the sun was transforming the distant clouds into streaks of orange and red, Alex spoke.

"She was wrong about you, you know. Your ex."

Maggie's stomach plummeted at the same time as her heart swelled. Her eyes shot to Alex, to find she was already being stared at. To find, for some reason, her own sudden tears reflected in Alex's eyes.

"She was wrong, Maggie. She was wrong."

Her eyes shifted slowly between Maggie's before drifting down to her lips and raking back up, slowly, to her eyes.

And suddenly there was a pair of gentle hands on Maggie's cheeks, and Maggie knew it was wrong, knew she couldn't be Alex's coming out affair, knew she shouldn't, but oh, she was closing her eyes and leaning in and Alex's lips were _so_ soft and how could someone be so insistent and so heartbreakingly gentle at the same time?

Alex's thumbs swiped across Maggie's cheek bones, and Maggie's entire body was on fire. Alex tasted like coffee and, somehow, vanilla and the ocean on a hot summer's day, and Maggie never wanted to taste anything else again. Ever.

She opened her lips slightly, slowly, and Alex's tongue tested her bottom lip. Maggie bit down a groan, her hands cupping Alex's elbows as Alex started shifting her body closer, closer.

 _Hard-headed. Insensitive. Obsessed with work. Borderline sociopath._

 _I'm almost thirty, and I feel like a kid again._

 _I can't do this to her._

Alex goes to deepen the kiss, and Maggie fights every cell in her body to pull away instead of bringing her lips forward.

It's nothing she wants, but it's everything she needs. That they both need. That they both deserve.

She dreads the look of hurt in Alex's eyes. She dreads the pain. She dreads it because she knows Alex won't understand - can't understand - because she won't hear _we can't yet. Not yet._ She'll hear _I don't want you._

Which couldn't be further from the truth.

But she braces herself for it, braces herself to end the giddy joy in Alex's eyes.

Braces herself to be hard-headed and insensitive, again.

But in the end, obsessed with work wins.

Because both women's phones chime simultaneously, and there is no pain in Alex's eyes, only heady irritation at their jobs. _Their_ jobs. Not Maggie's job. Both of their jobs.

Because they're both just a little obsessed with work. And Alex must think that's why Maggie pulled away; her phone buzzing in her pocket.

They exhale hard, Alex in ecstatic shock and Maggie in utter relief, as they pull their phones out of their pockets with apologetic grimaces.

They swap screens and confirm they're being texted about the same location, the same attack.

"Need a ride, Sawyer?" Her voice is flushed with the exhilaration of her first real kiss; her first kiss that counted. And Maggie's heart swells to a size she never knew it could be.

"Thought you'd never ask, Danvers."

She knows it's dangerous. She knows they'll need to talk.

But not yet.

Because now, they need to save the city.

Together.


	5. Chapter 5

J'onn raised his eyebrows when he saw the cop climb down off the back of Alex's Ducati, but he asked no questions. Maybe they'd have time - maybe he'd be brave enough - to ask her about it later. Instead, he simply tossed her the gun he had waiting for her, and nodded approvingly when Maggie reached behind her and pulled out the shotgun she had loaded in the band of her jeans at the small of her back.

"What've we got, boss?" Alex asked, eyes scanning the seemingly quiet city block.

"Wait for it," J'onn told them grimly. "Sharp on your toes; it could come at any time."

"What could - "

Maggie's question was cut off by a high-pitched whine and a shuddering boom in the concrete just on the other side of the street. J'onn shifted in front of Alex and Alex shoved Maggie down into the sidewalk behind them, shielding her with her arms, her body, her back.

Gone was the doe-eyed girl falling head over sensible footwear, peaking out of the closet and into an unspoken love affair with a woman who knew better than to let her, than to let _them_ , when one of them was broken and one of them was all fresh and new.

Here was the soldier, on a battlefield with an invisible enemy and the woman she couldn't stop thinking about; steel in her eyes and a planning spinning behind them.

When they heard the last of the concrete rubble settle - and none of it on them - Alex stood, fingertips sweeping up Maggie's back, automatically checking for injuries that she knew weren't there: knew couldn't be there, because she'd put her body directly between the explosion and Maggie.

But she checked anyway.

Satisfied by her cursory check and by Maggie's standing immediately with her gun cocked, arms straight out, eyes alert - positioned so she would have Alex's back the next time - Alex dug into her jacket pocket for her DEO earpiece as she nodded at J'onn that all was alright.

Winn's voice crackled into her ear as soon as she slipped in the earpiece.

"Alright alright alright, looks like there's a heat signature I can follow; based on the last three shots, I can extrapolate - "

"Mr. Schott, can you tell us where to expect the next blast from or not?"

Alex's eyes scanned the sky, comforted to see Kara flitting in and out of her vision, looking for all the world like she was looking for a flipping snitch that had alluded her sight.

"I don't - yes, yes, okay, next shot should be - Supergirl, at your 3 o'clock, five seconds, whatever the weapon is, it's charging again."

Alex and J'onn cocked their guns in the direction Kara flew in, and Maggie - lacking an earpiece but not intuition - covered their backs, scanning the sky, the streets, for signs of a second attacker, a second laser blast.

Kara struck out at someone, at something, and suddenly there was a crater in the side of a nearby building.

"Well, that's one way to flush someone out," J'onn commented mildly, eyes watchful. Alex smirked, proud of her sister, but her heart was racing much more than it would be normally. She wondered, momentarily, why.

Her lips were still tingling.

She gulped and put away the thought of what she'd just done.

 _I kissed Maggie Sawyer_.

She gulped again and glanced over her shoulder at the woman who wasn't part of their organization but who'd automatically fallen to watching their backs.

"Winn," Alex asked, "Winn, are there multiple heat signatures on the street, or just the one?"

"Uh, just the one that I can find right now, but I'd... I'd keep sharp." Kara's fight with the formerly invisible Cadmus lackey made a loud bang, followed by the whooshing of more concrete rubble in their direction. This time, Maggie launched herself in front of Alex, yanking her behind a nearby car as J'onn simply let an errant piece of metal fly through this momentarily red-transparent head.

Their mouths suddenly near each other again, both women were breathless, and not just from the suddenness of the dodging, of the loud bang and shudder of the concrete flying right past where Alex had just been standing.

"You okay?" Maggie asked, her eyes scanning Alex's body for injury.

"Yeah. You?" Maggie nodded distractedly and squinted through the car window at the last moments of Supergirl's fight, featuring her slamming the butt of the lackey's own Cadmus gun into his head, rendering him unconscious.

"Supergirl causes a lot of property damage, doesn't she? You all ever talk to her about that?"

Alex laughed breathily and held her hand out for Maggie as she stood. Maggie took it warily, fully aware that in the last half hour, she and Alex Danvers had kissed for the first time, hopped onto Alex's motorcycle, and proceeded to take turns putting their lives on the line to protect the other.

A gust of wind blew their hair back as Kara landed next to them.

"Sorry we couldn't be much help, Supergirl," Alex apologized, touching Kara's arm with a pit in her stomach; she hadn't gotten the chance, yet, to tell Kara... what was going on with her. And Maggie. And now the three of them were just standing there...

Kara shrugged. "At least there was only one of them. You're not hurt?"

Alex shook her head.

"Danvers!" J'onn was closing the van behind the arrested Cadmus lackey and gesturing for her to come on.

"I gotta go. Uh - meet you there, Supergirl?"

Kara furrowed her brow but nodded, and gave an afterthought nod to Maggie before flying off.

"So uh..." Alex turned to step closer into Maggie's space, the ghosts of soldier instincts gone from her face now, replaced by the beginnings of that brilliant, if goofy, smile she had whenever Maggie was in her proximity, or even just her thoughts. "Wanna get together tonight?" She glanced around them, at the cops starting to arrive at the scene. Her eyes swiveled back to Maggie and locked in. "Continue the uh... _conversation_ we started earlier?"

That kiss. _That kiss_. Maggie wondered vaguely if Alex had planned that; to take her somewhere so beautiful, and kiss her soundly, so soundly that she couldn't see or think or breathe anything but memories of the feeling of her lips, the movement of her breath, the warmth of her body, the stars behind her eyes.

 _Romantic_.

But no. No, she couldn't accept Alex being romantic. Not to her, not with her.

Because it would fizzle. It always would, it always did, because it always started like this. It always started with someone falling for Maggie's kindness, for Maggie's dimples. But falling without thinking; falling without _really_ caring.

Not to say that Danvers didn't _really_ care; she'd saved her life, more than once now, and if Darla was to be believed, she'd damn-near tortured someone to get information when Maggie had been kidnapped. She'd thrown herself into the line of fire - literally - so Maggie could get away unscathed.

And yet. And yet.

 _Insensitive. Hard-headed._ _Obsessed with work._ _Borderline sociopath. Never want to see you again._

Alex had said the first three weren't so bad.

And now - now, before she kissed her - Maggie still couldn't believe that this woman had _kissed_ her - she'd told her that her ex was wrong.

But thing was, she wasn't.

Maggie's relationships always started beautifully, and they always ended disastrously.

It had happened too many times, too painfully, for Maggie to believe it was anyone's fault but her own.

And now Alex was looking at her, seductively, happily, expectantly, wanting to keep doing this... whatever it was that they were doing that led them to stay up all night together and cap it off with a kiss.

Alex, who wasn't even out to her sister yet.

Alex, who was barely even out to herself.

"Danvers, listen - "

"Agent Danvers!" J'onn. Alex turned and waved him off, asking with her expression for another minute.

"Danvers, I uh - I think I have to go right home after work today. Get some sleep."

Alex nodded, her eyes a mixture of understanding and hesitant confusion.

Maggie hated herself.

She'd never felt herself loved; not like she was starting to feel from Alex.

But she knew it couldn't last: she'd destroy it. Especially if Alex put all those coming-out-affair expectations on her. Darla and her sister were wrong; she can't go for it. Not with this woman. Not with this woman who tried so hard to be perfect without realizing she already was.

"Tomorrow night, then?"

"Listen, Danvers. I... I had a great time, last night. This morning." Alex beamed, bounced on the balls of her feet. Maggie tried not to vomit.

 _Insensitive. Borderline sociopathic._

She wouldn't do that to Alex Danvers, especially not when she was just coming out.

She had everything she needed - not wanted - to say next all lined up. She had her objections on the tip of her tongue.

 _You're just coming out: it's an amazing time, and you'll never get it back, not like this, so you should live it up and experience it. For yourself. And only for yourself. And besides that, I'm a broken mess, because despite what you said about my ex being wrong about me, I really don't think she was. Because I destroy things, and I refuse to destroy you, Danvers. Alex. Especially when you're so vulnerable with the whole coming out thing. You think I'm perfect or something, that this will be easy, always as good as it feels right now. But it won't be, and you'll survive the fallout because you're tough as hell, but you'll cry - a lot - and I never, ever want to cause you pain. You'll survive our inevitable fallout, but me? I won't. So yes, I'm good for a drink when you come out to Kara and yes, I still want to be friends because even though it'll kill me it'll also keep me alive. Because tonight I will pass out from sheer exhaustion. And tomorrow night, no, I can't see you, because I'll need a date with a bottle of whiskey to wash away the beautiful memory of your perfect lips on mine so I can have some slim hope of surviving beyond tomorrow night without them on mine._

She knows what she needs to say. Even if it is a rambling mouthful.

But her sister, and Darla - one of her more amiable breakups, but even that had been ugly for a spell - they told her to see this through, and more immediately, Alex's eyes are so wide, so hopeful, so happy, so full of magic and so full of potential - so full, unbelievably, of growing _love_ \- such a perfect contrast with the steel in them when there were invisible guns looming over them.

Maggie's mouth takes over and her better judgement curses at her heart.

"Tomorrow night," she confirms, and the radiance of Alex's smile as she nods and trots toward the DEO van makes Maggie lose her breath.

Fucking hell.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Maggie passed out the moment her head hit the back of her couch, the moment she swung her legs up in a messy sprawl over the overstuffed edge.

Sleep was important to Maggie Sawyer; and she knew it was important to Alex Danvers.

Because, with both of their jobs being what they were, they needed to sleep when they could. They needed to sleep whenever they could, really - only choosing to spend what little social time they could grab with people who would give them energy, not take it - because at any moment, they could be called in and need to be awake, need to be alert, need to be focused, because lack of any of those things could be the difference between life and death in their line of work.

And yet, they'd spent the last twenty four hours awake. Together.

All night in the bar, all morning in that diner, a drive out to the mountains before reporting to their respectively life-threatening jobs.

And, more, Alex Danvers had kissed her. Alex Danvers had _kissed_ her. And, like the terrible decision maker that she was, Maggie had kissed her back.

By the time she dragged through work and took the bus home - she left her Triumph by the precinct because she was so tired, now, that there was no way it'd be even halfway responsible to drive herself back - she had no energy left to think. No energy left to process.

No energy left to replay the feeling of Alex's lips on hers, the way her eyes had drifted down to her mouth, the way her hands had felt, the way her tongue had tasted, the way she knew she'd kissed women before, maybe too many women, but none of them had been like _that._ None of them had been like _Alex._

Maggie collapsed, and Maggie slept.

She didn't move until the sun started creeping through her windows, until her phone blasted an old Something Corporate tune from her back pocket, until she rubbed her eyes and silenced her wake up alarm and her heart leaped because she remembered, she remembered, that tonight she was seeing Alex again.

Was it a date? They'd kissed, and then Alex had asked to get together. So... a date?

She ran a hand through her hair and rubbed at the painful stiffness in her neck, stretched through the cricks in her back, fumbling for her phone and punching in her sister's number while she stumbled to the bathroom in search of her toothbrush.

"Margaret, do you know what time it is."

"Well good morning to you, too, sis."

"Maggie."

"She kissed me."

Her sister immediately perked up, immediately was awake. Maggie imagined her sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes shining, shoving the covers off and kicking her feet, squealing. She grinned broadly.

"The fed kissed you? Of _course_ she did! How the hell was it? Did you fuck? Did - "

" _Jesus_ , woman, you'd think you lived entirely through my love life."

"Maggie, I _do_ live entirely through your sex life, you know I'm not trying to find myself some Blue Springs man. But hold up though, you wouldn't be calling me at the ass crack of dawn - "

"Iz nah _tha_ early - " Maggie said around the sides of her toothbrush.

" _Ass. Crack. Of. Dawn._ Just to tell me she kissed you. So you're freaking out. But you're happy. But you're freaking out. A lot. Am I close?"

Maggie spit and rinsed and rolled her eyes.

"Apparently I'm an open flipping book."

"Okay. Spill."

Maggie sighed as she rinsed her toothbrush, as she swished mouthwash around and pictured her sister rolling her eyes as she waited. She spit again.

"I just... It's too messy, sis, it - she... I don't want to mess her up, I don't want to - "

"Maggie. What's-her-fuck was wrong about you. All that shit she said about you. You can't let it get under your skin like that."

"She wasn't the first ex who's said that stuff." She tested the shower temperature with her hand and put her sister on speaker as she peeled off yesterday's clothes.

"She also wasn't the first girlfriend you've had that depended on you feeling like shit and doing everything for them all the time and doting on them and all that, which is _fine_ , Mags, I know that's who you are, but there's a difference between being good to someone when they're also good to you and giving them everything when they just give you... what? Sex and sweet nothings, talking about she loves you when meantime she's screwing someone on the side or leaving you for some man or trying to kill your confidence so you can't go anywhere except with her?"

"Oh come on, those three were just - "

"Maggie."

"Okay, fine, so then how is it not my fault? How is the parade of women who treat me like shit not my fault, if the common denominator is me?"

Her sister sucked on her teeth and Maggie sighed, bringing the phone into her bedroom to lay out the clothes she'd wear today - the clothes she'd wear tonight, to see Alex, to see the next woman she'd inevitably screw it up with.

Fuck.

"I don't know about all that shit math talk, Mags, but I know you. And if you want to blame yourself for being a good damn person, you be my guest, didn't you tell me this fed girl saved your life? Like, twice? Didn't you tell me she beat the shit outta someone at that bar of yours to find you when you were kidnapped? I mean Mags, that says something - "

"It's her _job_ to protect people - "

"Maggie. When are you seeing her again?"

"Tonight. She uh... she wanted to go out tonight."

"So she asked you."

"Yah."

She settled on an all black ensemble, shining with a silver belt buckle, topped with her favorite leather jacket. She laid everything out on her bed, squinted, nodded, and padded back into the bathroom, now steaming with hot water.

"So she _likes_ you, Mags. Let her like you. Let her be good to you, damn. You deserve it, Maggie."

She thought about what Alex had said before she kissed her - _your ex was wrong about you._ She gulped, and she sighed, and she shivered thinking of Alex's lips on hers.

"Listen, I gotta go shower, get to work. Thanks for..."

"Ass crack of dawn. Whatever, Mags, it's what sisters are for, right? You better call me when you get home tonight. _If_ you get home tonight."

"Oh shut up. Talk soon, okay?"

"Yeah. Love you."

"Love you too."

She grinned and shook her head as she hung up and tossed her phone onto her bed.

She had a date with Alex Danvers tonight.

 _Fuck._

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

_Sawyer. Seven okay for tonight?_

Maggie had been expecting a text from Alex - Alex always texted - but it still turned her stomach into knots. It still made her feel like a teenager and an old soldier all at once.

It still made her feel exhilarated and terrified all at once.

She should have told her after Alex kissed her. Hell, after _they_ kissed, because there was no point in pretending she hadn't kissed her back.

No, no, no.

She should have told her _before_ Alex kissed her, before she drove her out to a beautiful sunrise, before they got breakfast, before they spent the entire night shooting pool and shooting tequila in the bar.

Before she got her hopes up.

 _God, I'm a terrible person._

Not that Alex shouldn't hope. Not that Maggie didn't have feelings for her. Because god, god, _god_ , she did.

But she couldn't. She couldn't.

She wouldn't break Alex like she was broken.

She couldn't be broken again. Not by this woman, this woman, this woman.

But - just like her lips responded when her mind told her not to, just like her smile responded when her walls told her not to - her fingers responded when her terror screamed not to.

 _Sure thing, Danvers. The bar good, or you have something else in mind?_

She groaned as she hit send.

Because as she hit send, she was excited.

And she couldn't afford to be excited.

She was damaged goods, and Alex Danvers was everything Alex feared she wasn't: Alex Danvers was perfect.

"Hey, earth to Sawyer. What's going on, Detective? You go somewhere?"

She shook her head like she was getting water out of her ears and blinked rapidly. "Sorry Cap. Just uh, just checking - "

"Hot date tonight?" he grinned, and she furrowed her brow.

"Just checking through the case file from our last - "

"Sawyer. You're a good cop. You've risen through the department faster than - but you know this. And I've seen you - I'm was a detective too, Sawyer - go through woman after woman. Ah ah ah, I'm not judging, god knows you have more attractive women enamored with you than any of the guys in the precinct. But I've never seen you distracted before. This one must be special."

She stares up at her Captain and runs terrifying calculations in her head.

Calculations she learned in Blue Springs, when her big sister and her best friend - the only other out gay kid in the town, a white boy in her high school - were the only people who didn't spit at her, who didn't mutter slurs under their breath, who didn't giggle at the girl who got kicked out, who never quite seemed to fit, who got straight As but never spoke up in class, who all the girls secretly wanted and would get with her under the bleachers and then swear to their jock boyfriends that she seduced them.

Calculations that kept her - for the most part - unbruised.

Calculations that kept her - for the most part - alive.

But his eyes are sincere, and even though they've never talked about her sexuality, not explicitly, she's seen his son at some precinct functions and he made her gaydar ping to no end. And the Captain seemed close to his son. Not to mention, he never seemed to mind the work she did on the side with queer youth. In fact, he'd encouraged the other guys on more than one occasion to help her out with it, to learn from her example.

So maybe he wasn't like her father.

Maybe he was trying to bond, offer his support, tell her it's okay; not entrap her, not threaten her, not hurt her.

"Yeah," she chanced, her voice desperately trying not to shake. "Yeah, she is."

He grinned a little sideways and clapped a calloused hand on her shoulder.

"Well she's got someone pretty special too, Sawyer."

And Maggie did something she never did at work: she spluttered.

"Um... thank... thank you. Thank you, sir."

He nodded and took a breath like he was about to say something else, but then shook his head and just nodded at her before heading back into his office. She stared after him with a furrowed brow and her stomach flipped as her phone buzzed again.

 _Let's start at the bar and see where it goes ;) That sound okay?_

Maggie's had panic attacks before - she knew what hyperventilating felt like - and it felt like this. It felt like this, but this was also different.

Different because the uncontrollable thrashing of her heart and disorientation of her senses wasn't only from panic - though that was a big part of it, to be sure - it was also from something that felt like excitement.

Something that felt like being... wanted.

She wondered why she thought Alex Danvers would be anything but cocky. Over text, at least, when she had time to compose that adorable little pffting and grin she had.

"Fuck," Maggie muttered under her breath. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

* * *

She was grateful Alex had set the date for seven, not earlier.

Because by the end of the day, her nerves were so tightly coiled that if she didn't do something to unwind, she might snap.

Fortunately, that something was home.

One of the first investments she made when she moved to National City: a heavy bag, in the corner of her studio apartment's living room.

And the only thing she brought here from the hellhole that was home: the stereo that her best friend and her big sis had gotten her when she went off to college. When she escaped.

She blasted the latter, now, as she wrapped her wrists and beat the crap out of the former. Hard.

 _Borderline sociopathic._

She'd flirted with a handful of diagnoses over the years - PTSD being one of them - but sociopathic was never leveled at her by any therapist. Just by ex-girlfriends.

Which probably stung more.

 _Obsessed with work_.

She laid out a combination that sent her partner sprawling when they sparred last week.

 _That's okay. Alex is pretty obsessed with work too. That's what I like about her. Maybe it's what she likes about you, too._

 _No. Stop. No. It's not... she likes you because she doesn't know you._

 _She's a secret agent: she's more observant than you're giving her credit for._

Another combination, another, another, another, in rapid succession.

She grunted in frustration, in the circles that kept speeding around in her mind, and she slammed the bag harder, cranked the music up louder, ripped her tank top over her head and tossed it into the corner so that only her sports bra and basketball shorts remained.

 _You have to call and cancel. It'll hurt her less the sooner you do it. The longer you keep up this charade that you're dating material, the longer she'll have to fall for the woman she thinks is the real you._

 _You_ are _the real you, damn, you think Alex can't see that?_

 _That's what I'm afraid of._

Her mind didn't stop and neither did her body, hopping from one foot to the other, twisting her hips and throwing her arms and slamming the bag with everything she had, until sweat was dripping out of her every pore and her ponytail threatened to come undone.

She glanced at the clock below the television and groaned; she'd lost track of time. It was almost seven.

Almost time to meet Alex, for drinks, and then to... see where it went, apparently. With a wink.

She groaned again.

This woman was irresistible.

And that was exactly the problem.

* * *

"Hi Maggie," Alex smiled when Maggie sauntered into the bar with her thumbs buried in the pockets of her jeans. Her voice was an octave or two lower than it normally was, and Maggie flushed with the realization that they hadn't seen each other since they kissed; hadn't seen each other since they kissed and saved each other's lives and went back to their separate, but god so similar, jobs. Lives.

"Danvers, you uh... you clean up nice."

 _Smooth, Sawyer_ , she reprimanded herself, but damn, she really did.

A black lace top, toned tone just slightly by a tight pair of jeans that made Maggie's mouth go dry. Perfect makeup.

Perfect everything.

But really, Maggie found herself wondering what Alex would look like in the morning, without makeup, without having a chance to rub the sleep from out of her eyes.

She must look perfect.

But suddenly she realized that Alex was talking.

Or, babbling, really.

"You do too, with the hair and the jacket and the... I'm not good at this," Alex confessed, but both of them - Maggie in spite of herself - were smiling because of their repetition, because of their acute memories of every word they'd ever said to each other.

Maggie's stomach fluttered, because she's chosen the jacket special. Chosen the jacket because it was the one she'd ridden an hour out of town to buy herself when she got into college. Chosen the jacket because it was her armor, her proof.

Her proof that she survived.

Her hope that maybe, she'd survived in tact to deserve the gorgeous woman in front of her.

"You're perfect at it, Alex," she found herself saying, and she found herself - of course - meaning it.

Alex spluttered again, and Maggie forced herself out of her head, and into the moment. Her smile deepened as her head tilted.

"You really don't believe that, do you?" Alex just blinked at her, and Maggie sat, not across from her, but next to her. They were on a date, dammit. Weren't they?

"Was it just the pressure of taking care of Kara? Feeling like you had to be perfect? Or other things, too?"

"Well a family of genius PhDs will do that to you, I guess. But yeah, mostly Kara, mostly... she was an orphan, when she came to us. I mean, I guess she still is, but it... my mom... Kara was my responsibility. But I - wait, no, you know what? No. This - I asked you out on a _date_ , Maggie, I don't want to have a therapy session."

But Maggie just shook her head. "It's not a therapy session, Danvers. It's called getting to know someone. Isn't that the point of a date?"

Alex's eyes flashed as they flitted down to Maggie's lips, and the bottom nearly dropped out of her stomach.

 _Of course she's thinking about kissing you. Because why would she want to get to know you? She's just attracted to you because she's just coming out, because she's -_

She usually had fairly decent control over her facial expressions, but Alex had an effect on her she'd never experienced before - or maybe Alex just paid attention like no one ever had before - because Alex was able to read straight through her eyes.

"Maggie, I'm sorry, no, of course I want to get to know you better, I told you yesterday, that's why I - Maggie, I'm sorry, I was trying to... to..." Her eyes roll up to the ceiling. "I was trying to _flirt_ with you, I'm not... I'm not good at any of this, like I said, I'm sorry, I - "

"Slow down there, Danvers," Maggie put a gentle hand on her arm, and their eyes collided because they both could swear the sparks were so strong as to be visible to everyone in the bar. "You don't have to apologize. I'm just a little... jumpy. You're doing just fine."

Alex bit her lip and flagged M'gann for drinks, careful not to move her arm from under Maggie's hand. Maggie didn't move her hand, either, and her face burned as M'gann came up to their table.

"Beers and tequila for my favorite humans?" she asked, and Maggie hoped Alex didn't catch the excitement behind her smile when she noticed - of course she noticed - Maggie's hand on Alex's arm.

Alex glanced at Maggie and ventured, "Just a couple of beers, please? I don't know if we're staying long. Some place I want to take you. To eat," she said before Maggie could panic.

M'gann raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips and looked like she very much wanted to say something, but she was a better friend than that, a more subtle friend than that, and she'd grill Maggie for all the details later, anyway, so she contented herself with a nod and a smile as she strode away to fill their order.

"Is that okay? That I ordered for us? I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have assumed - "

"Danvers, hey. It's okay. You're more of a nervous wreck than me right now, and I - "

"I'm sorry - "

"Don't be, it's cute, I just - "

"Wait, you're a nervous wreck right now? I... but you've... been on dates. With... with women. Why - "

"I haven't been on a date with _you._ Danvers."

Their eyes locked and their lips parted and time froze, and Maggie could swear she could hear both of their heartbeats but nothing else.

"I make you nervous?"

Maggie's accidental admission - _dammit Sawyer -_ seemed to make Alex slightly more confident, and she tried to fight down how hot it was that Alex could be both nerdily adorable and confidently seductive.

"Don't get too big a head about it," she deflected, and Alex just grinned and shook her head and thanked M'gann for the beers she put down.

"Tell you something?" Alex asked, seeming to sense that Maggie was getting more nervous the closer they got to her feelings.

Gratitude shot through Maggie's veins as she took a calming gulp of her drink. "Of course."

Alex waited until Maggie's eyes came back up to meet hers, and she grinned broadly, proudly.

"I told Kara."

Maggie spilled her beer and practically squealed, all her nerves, all her reservations, forgotten.

Because if the look on Alex's face was any indication, she'd told her little sister, and it had gone well.

And her sister was her world.

Like Maggie's father had been.

And that happiness? That happiness that Maggie could never have? That's all she wanted for Alex. Because Alex only deserved the very best of everything.

So she spilled her beer and practically squealed and forgot her nerves and her reservations, and she pulled Alex into her arms.

"Yeah you did! Oh, I'm so proud of you! Way to bury the lead, Danvers!" she said to the air over Alex's shoulder, and god Alex's body was warm and soft and strong and perfect.

"So how'd it go, what'd she say?" she asked as she pulled back, beaming and nearly shaking with overwhelming joy for this woman who deserved the world.

She barely touched her beer as she watched Alex talk, as she watched Alex beam, as she watched Alex do that little thing where she would look off at the ceiling when she was feeling something particularly strongly, when eye contact was too much, when she needed to gather herself.

She barely touched her beer as she listened to Alex's story, as she felt Alex's radiating happiness, as she felt herself falling in love.

 _Dammit, Sawyer. Not even halfway through the night and you're already gone. Dammit._

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

She wanted to kiss her again.

She wanted to kiss her again because listening to her was more intoxicating than the most expensive scotch in the world.

She wanted to kiss her again because Alex was somehow adorable and sexy and timid and confident, all wrapped up into one, and she wanted to kiss her because Alex was regaling her with tales of crushes that she never realized were crushes and flirtations she never realized were flirtations, and Alex was _I'm so sorry, am I talking too much, of course I'm talking too much, I'm sorry, I'll stop now_ , and Maggie was _not at all, Danvers. You deserve to be listened to. You deserve to be focused on._

And she wanted to kiss her because of the way Alex blushed, the way Alex spluttered, the way Alex glanced down at Maggie's lips like Maggie wasn't the only one thinking about it.

She wanted to kiss her again, but Alex deserved more.

She deserved more and she deserved better, but Maggie was something she'd never really been before. Not like this.

Maggie was smitten.

Smitten with the way Alex laughed, with the way Alex talked, with the halting rhythm of her words and the way her eyes burned when they met Maggie's.

Smitten with the stories she told and the casualness with which she talked about her own pain, and the attentiveness and rage with which she talked about the pain of others.

Smitten with the way Alex kept stopping herself, kept apologizing for talking too much; with the way it was so abundantly clear that she'd never been able to do that, not really, not like this; smitten with the way she felt comfortable sharing with... her.

With someone who she was clearly so far above. With someone who so clearly didn't deserve her.

Because Alex Danvers was so far out of her league.

But she was still there.

She was still there, and she was still asking Maggie about herself.

"What about you?"

"What about me what?"

Alex giggled, and Maggie decided it was the most unexpected and the most beautiful sound she'd ever, ever heard.

"Well, I just spent god knows how long rambling about all these crushes I'm realizing now... what about you? When you were coming out? Did you have something similar?"

Eliza Wilke.

Her father standing over her while her forced her to pack a bag - one bag, her entire childhood, her entire life - because she was selfish, and she was disgusting, and she was only going to ever amount to the equivalent of sin.

And she hadn't been able to prove him wrong since.

"I..." She opened her mouth and she wished Alex would just keep talking.

Keep talking, because listening was easy.

Listening was good.

Talking was hard.

Talking was when it was about her, and when it was about her, people got hurt.

But Alex's eyes were soft, and Alex's eyes were expectant. Alex's eyes wanted to... know. To know her.

She couldn't fathom why. But there it was.

"You said you had somewhere you wanted to take me." Her stomach swooped. "To eat." Her face burned - she wasn't making this much better - even though Alex didn't seem to register the sexual undertones.

"You're hungry?" Alex asked, and she was up like a shot, like it was all she ever wanted to do in life to make sure Maggie never wanted for anything.

Maggie wanted to cry, and Maggie wanted to run.

She did neither, rooted to the spot by Alex's wide eyes, open hand, and the way she was slapping a twenty down on the table quicker than Maggie could even register her digging into her pocket.

"Oh, you don't have to do that, I can - "

Alex stilled her hands and they both almost gasp at the energy of their touch.

"Please, the number of times I've beaten you at pool? It's probably your money anyway."

Maggie grinned despite herself, because Alex was such a heady combination of shy and cocky that Maggie couldn't help but grin, couldn't help but take her hand. Couldn't help but let herself be led out into the night, getting a wink from M'gann on the way out the door.

She couldn't help but let herself follow this woman, this incredible woman, to what, she knew, would be the destruction of them both.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

They didn't make it to wherever Alex had wanted to take them to eat.

They didn't make it, because as soon as Alex took Maggie's hand - confident and easy and seemingly effortless, the way Maggie had first taken Alex's hand the night they busted the alien fight club - both of their phones chimed frantically.

Maggie's captain was on hers; Winn was on Alex's.

They moved as one - they didn't even unlink their hands - on the way to their motorcycles, and they rode as one to the scene of the latest Cadmus attempt to draw Supergirl out into capture.

Alex skinned her elbows on the pavement and Maggie took a solid kick to the gut, but a combination of cover fire from Alex's team and Maggie's team's knowledge of the shopping complex being attacked - and a few assists from Winn's intel and Kara's heat vision - the scene of attack was a crime scene within the hour.

Maggie watched Alex impatiently getting cleaned up by her own medics while Maggie refused to be treated by hers, eyes scanning Alex's body - her impossibly tight jeans, her nearly see-through, black lace shirt incongruous with their black polos, their bullet-proof vests, but somehow, also, perfect - to make sure there weren't any injuries she was hiding.

"I'm sorry."

Alex jumped at the sound of Maggie's voice when Maggie had finally shrugged off the three different officers needing her signature. Alex nodded away the DEO agents fussing over her elbows, and they obeyed without a second glance, without a question.

Maggie swallowed how turned on Alex's easy command made her.

"What would you be sorry for? Are you secretly working for Cadmus?" Alex teased, leaning forward and raking her eyes up and down Maggie's body, conducting her own assessment of whether Maggie'd been injured.

Maggie chuckled and shifted so she could lean with Alex on the DEO van, both of their gazes scanning over the people working for them, the people processing their crime scene. In both of their jurisdictions.

Because they _did_ make a good team.

"No. But our date. You were gonna take me to dinner somewhere, and now - "

"And now we'll just have to have a second date to make up for it, won't we?"

Maggie marveled at how Alex could be smooth as all get out on moment, and spluttering helplessly the next.

She marveled at how _she_ could have that effect on a woman like Alex Danvers.

And she hated herself for marveling.

"Yeah, about that. Listen Danvers, I..."

Alex turned to her, eyes wide, eyes terrified. Eyes already set to punish herself. Because her whole life had been about being perfect, and she couldn't even do the dating thing right now that she knew she wanted women.

This woman.

And god, did Maggie want her, too.

She wanted to kiss her - again, god, again - and she wanted to taste the sweat on her neck, kiss her way down the nasty scrapes on her elbows, map every inch of her skin with her tongue...

"I know you said you think my ex is wrong. About me. And I know you said you want to get to know me. And I've had so much fun with you, Danvers, but - "

"And that's all I've been? Fun?"

Alex's voice was hollow and it was hardened and it was every bit Alex Danvers, DEO agent, rather than Alex Danvers, helplessly nerdy, constantly stammering, baby gay softie.

It chilled Maggie's spine and it sent bile up into her throat.

"No. No, Alex, no, it's not... Alex listen, I... you're just coming out. You're just coming out, and I know everything's bright and shiny for you right now - _I'm_ bright and shiny for you right now - but that's not... that's not how it is. That's not how I am. And I... I don't meet too many people that I care about. But I care about you. A lot. And I want..."

She wanted everything.

Everything.

She deserved nothing.

"I want to keep doing... this. What we're doing. Dating. Starting to date. Whatever. But Alex, it can't... I'm not... I'm taking advantage of you, Alex. Of... of where you're at in life right now. You kissed me, and it was amazing, it was... I could get swept away in you, Alex, I could... I am... but it's not fair to you. None of this is fair to you, because I'm not what..."

"So you care about me. You care about me, and you're having such a great time getting... getting swept away by me that you don't want to go on another date with me. Because I'm just coming out, and that's not your thing. Because I could be fun, but it'd be even more fun with someone who knows what the hell they're doing."

"What? No, Alex, that's not what I - "

"You know what? Save it. Just... let Winn know if you make any progress."

"Alex, don't go - " she called, but half-heartedly. Because of course Alex was going.

Hell, if the roles were reversed, she'd go, too.

"Fuck," she whispered to herself at Alex's back, at Alex's stiff and steady and angry and devastatingly attractive walk. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

* * *

 _I feel like you didn't really hear what I was trying to say earlier, Danvers._

She waited over three hours for a response. In the end, she was grateful she even got one.

 _Oh, I heard you. I'm fresh off the gay boat, that's not your thing. You liked kissing me, but not enough to keep dating me. I heard you loud and clear._

Her stomach sank and she nearly threw her phone across the room. Instead, she tried calling her.

Calling Alex.

She didn't pick up.

Of course she didn't pick up.

 _That's not what I was trying to say, Alex. Not at all._

Another silence.

Maggie sighed and typed another message.

 _Except the part about liking kissing you. You're right about that part._

Nothing.

Nothing for a week.

Winn contacted her department with updates on the case.

Her own phone calls to her DEO contact number wouldn't get past Pam in HR, who delivered a very pointed lecture, seemingly out of nowhere, about the importance of finishing the things we start.

Nothing for another week.

She was at the bar every night.

Alex never was.

Until one night, three weeks later - three agonizing weeks, three weeks of unanswered calls and unanswered doors and _Alex, I'm sorry_ and _Alex, I meant it when I said that I care about you. A lot. And I don't wanna imagine my life without you. Please, can we just talk?_ \- Alex was, finally, at the bar again.

Maggie's heart leaped.

Until she noticed Alex's arm.

Draped around the body of another woman.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

A continuation of my series Way Down (We Go), here - /works/9154834?view_full_work=true - fucking finally. And don't worry, they're endgame. But I wanted a slow burn on the show, for Alex to date other people first, so you know. Here's me, being evil. Sorry not sorry.

* * *

When she first saw her in the bar, she'd thought that maybe they could talk. Until she noticed Alex's arm, draped around the shoulder of some gorgeous brunette.

Some gorgeous brunette who was laughing and leaning into her, hand on her thigh.

Maggie's fingers twitched and her stomach lurched, until a gentle but somehow firm hand took hers and steered her away.

"Maggie," M'gann's voice was soft, warning. Understanding.

"I'm fine," Maggie deadpanned with no feeling that masked every feeling in the book.

 _Of course she found someone else. She's Alex fucking Danvers._

 _Of course this woman will make her happier than you ever could._

 _Couldn't she have found her own damn bar, though?_

 _No. It's not just your bar. She has every right to be here._

 _She looks happy. She deserves to be happy._

 _Fuck._

"Mags. I'm nearly four hundred years old, I think I can read you better than - "

"M'gann. I'm fine. I'm... I'm happy she's happy, is all. And I need a drink. Please."

M'gann sighed and nodded slowly, her eyes squinted in compassion, before she started walking away. Maggie reached out to take her arm, the same way M'gann had taken hers.

"Hey. I'm sorry. For being a jerk. You were trying to protect me. I appreciate it, M'gann. Thank you."

M'gann just placed her hand on Maggie's and squeezed softly. Maggie followed her to the bar and leaned over the counter, all elbows and bowed head.

 _Don't look over at her._

 _Don't._

 _Don't torture yourself._

 _You should look, though. Hell, you deserve a little torture. Leading her on and dumping her like that? And how patronizing is 'I care about you so I can't be with you' anyway?_

 _God, she looks beautiful._

"Hey, it's M'gann, right? Two more beers please," a voice jolted her out of her own head.

A voice that belonged to the gorgeous brunette Alex had just had her arm around.

* * *

"Anything I can get you, soldier?" the woman asked then, and Maggie hadn't wanted to disappear this badly since college.

"What makes you say soldier?" she objected, her body stiffening, straightening. She was slightly taller than the other woman, but only just. She used every inch she could.

"Sorry, I... I'm JAG Corps, I just... the way you hold yourself, the gun in your waistband, I assumed - "

"I'm a detective," Maggie interrupted the woman.

 _Of course she's dating a soldier now. A lawyer soldier._

 _Smarter than you, definitely._

 _Sexier, for sure._

 _Higher ranked, probably._

 _Less of a jerk, she'd better be, or it won't matter she's a soldier, I'll kick her ass. Not that Alex needs my protection._

 _Or anything from me._

 _Not after what I did to her._

"A detective," the woman was saying approvingly, thanking M'gann as she handed her the beers with slightly wide eyes, flitting back and forth between the woman, Maggie, and someone approaching the bar.

Maggie's stomach plummeted.

 _Fuck_.

"Lane, did you ask M'gann to ferment the drinks from scratch or - oh. Hi. Maggie."

She said it like the name broke her heart, and that? That, along with the look on Alex's face and the healthy amount of cleavage showing from her tight shirt, broke Maggie's.

"Maggie? I - _oh_ ," this Lane woman's eyes flew wide, and now M'gann was intentionally finding wet spots on the counter to dry over and over and over.

"Danvers, it's been a minute," Maggie found her voice somehow. Without losing her dignity, somehow. "How are you?"

Something dark flickered past Alex's eyes at the question. The woman she was with put a hand on her arm, and she steadied somewhat.

Maggie's heart broke. Again.

"My mother would tell me I have no manners. Maggie Sawyer, this is Lucy Lane. She's my - "

"We've worked a few cases together," Lucy interrupted, holding a hand out for Maggie to shake. It was much smoother, softer, than Maggie's.

Less calloused.

But firm nonetheless.

"Well uh... you two look like you're having a great date night, so I'll uh... I'll leave you to it."

She slapped a twenty on the counter for the drink she hadn't touched and started to leave before giving Alex or Lucy a chance to say a word.

She heard Alex calling her name.

She pretended she didn't.

She hadn't cried in public since high school. She wasn't planning to start again now.

Until a hand touched her arm, just as she was heading out into the alley. But it wasn't M'gann's.

It was Alex's.

"Maggie," she said again, more insistently, more pleading, now that they were standing so close together: close enough for Maggie's knees to threaten buckling, close enough to smell the lavender and the motorcycle exhaust on the woman who could have been her girlfriend by now.

"Danvers, listen, you made it clear you didn't wanna hear from me. And I get it. I do. I don't mean to assume that you still have any feelings whatsoever about me, or what happened a few weeks ago, but either way, I don't wanna disturb your date - "

"Oh, so you think I'm, what, suddenly magically over you? That all the..." Alex fumbled for words, and Maggie's heart quaked. She stole a glance at Alex's lips, and she knew Alex was thinking about the same kiss she was. "That everything that happened with us didn't mean anything?"

"Well, you're dating this gorgeous JAG Corps - "

"Lucy's one of my best friends, Maggie. One of my _only_ friends. This isn't a date, we... that's not the point. You think past relationships don't hurt you anymore just because you start dating someone new? Because apparently your last relationship made you decide to dump me - "

"I never wanted to hurt you, Alex."

"Right, so hurt me sooner rather than later?"

"Yeah. It's less painful that way," Maggie nearly whispered, suddenly exhausted.

Suddenly aware that Alex's hand was still on her arm.

Alex blinked and released her arm. Maggie's stomach swooped like the entire world was slipping out from under her feet.

"Look. There was some truth to what you said. About me being so... new to all this. So maybe... maybe you're right. Maybe I can get... less new at it. And in the meantime, maybe we can try to be friends?"

 _Friends, so I can watch you go through woman after woman._

 _Friends, so I can watch you find someone you actually want to be with, and not just because they're your coming out crush._

 _Friends, so I can help you through the pains other women will put you through._

 _Friends, so I can only admit that I want you so damn badly when I'm alone in my bed at night._

"Sure, Danvers. Friends. That mean you're gonna actually answer my texts now?"

Alex blushed, and Maggie resisted kissing her.

"I'm sorry about that."

"You didn't do anything wrong. But are you sure? About this friends thing?"

Alex nodded, her face set with determination and an emotion Maggie couldn't quite identify.

"Pool. Tomorrow night."

Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat.

Swallowed the screaming in her head and the shattering in her heart.

"Wouldn't miss it."

Alex smiled softly before nodding and walking away, and Maggie tried not to watch the way her body moved, the way her boots clicked slightly on the floor, the way her hands clenched and unclenched once, twice, as she walked back to the woman she said was just a friend.

Just like Maggie.

 _Fuck._

TBC


End file.
